Peter Baily John Rowe, sen. Thomas White Ralph Rogers Thomas Hill George Young David Arkell William Newton John Gellmore Peter Wylie William Jackson William Haswell Thomas Thomas Luke Gray Robert Burn, jun. Wm. Hutchinson, jun. John White James Dowey Hornsby Hutchinson John Sugden Benjamin Parkens John Bacon Newham William Brown Thomas Stubs William Stobbs John Jomas Henry Mackintosh William Stephenson William Leslie George Kirnaby William Anderson Robert Ford Henry Gowland John Braddal ་ Benjamin Dinis William Coalchester Tmothy Simpson James Dixon Henry Emmerson James Peterson Ralph Wise Thomas White David Brown John Havorson Joseph Hunt George Mould Thomas Potts James Hogson Ralph Brady Joseph Black Robert Scott David Coventry Thomas Scott Robert Bowman Gilbert Raudel Robert Shampus Robert Cowens William Riddle George Vasey Samuel Smith Henry Anderson, jun. William Comm Henry Reves Alexander Alexander William M'Lean Henry Fordyce Robert Robson John Scott Humphry Coxon Robert Scot John Sheldon William Chinton William Smith Thomas Lavrick William Charlton William Glen Peter Peall Thomas Sanderson William Lowes Thomas Scorer John Little Richard Little James Little John Little, sen. John Coale Robert Shipley Francis Reay Francis Bailey George Sanderson James Sanderson 'William Sanderson Thomas Sanderson Robinson Sanderson William Walles Matthew Johnson Thomas Musgrove Charles Musgrove Christopher Lawson John Douglass Joseph Douglass William Douglass Thomas Wilson John Wilkinson John Horn William Robson James Clennet Robert Milburn John Cracet Robert Storker Noble Hedley Mark Sutheren George Ditchbun James Smith William Simpson, sen. Thoams Hornsbey John Wright Henry Gray Thomas Thompson Wallion Turner John Baxter, jun. Matthew Robson, jun. Edward Spence John Walker John Hogg John Hill D. Hill J. C. Drury John Jarvis William Stanford William Dacre Wright.. NORTHERN POLITICAL UNION Agreed and passed at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, MY LORD, 1. We, the undersigned associates and friends of the Northern Political Union, hasten to present to your Lordship an address of congratulation on the passing of the Reform Bill; in doing this, it is our intention to couple duty with pleasure, and not only to express the gratitude we think due to your Lordship, but also to lay before you a plain and explicit statement of those beneficial results which the country expects, as the consequence of that great measure of public justice. While we avow our readiness to do justice to your Lordship's character; to acknowledge the ability with which Lordyour ship has advocated the cause of the people; to rejoice that Providence has permitted you to realize in age the projects of your youth, and carry to a successful issue, as minister of the crown, that reform, to advance which your Lordship originally pursued the same course which we, guided by your illustrious example, are now pursuing, viz. combining ourselves into political associations, like that of "the Society of Friends of the People," of which your Lordship was a distinguished member; hold the elective franchise, a right which while we acknowledge your capacity the people regard as of the most sacred and ability to serve and save your and important character, crippled and country, still we deem it our duty to state frankly, that your Lordship has confined within limits of a narrow denot yet fulfilled the expectations of scription. We behold in the division of England. Till those expectations are counties a new field opened for the fulfilled we cannot use the language of exercise of aristrocratic influence and unqualified panegyric. In the midst of tyranny, by no means less pernicious bankruptcy and ruin, of complaints at than that of the boroughmongers which home and insults abroad, while the it has destroyed. We behold also a country is resounding with the cries disregard of the true interests of the and supplications of famishing artisans people in the retention of the monied and starving labourers, we cannot in- qualification for members of Parliament, sult the misery of the public, by chaunt- a qualification which tends to keep alive ing the praises of a minister. in the breasts of the people, that higher 2. Forty years, my Lord, have rolled regard for riches than for wisdom or for away, since your Lordship presented virtue, to which the vulgar are but nathat celebrated petition, in which you turally too prone, and to make poverty, offered to prove at the bar of the House which is often the concomitant of both, of Commons, that a majority of its a subject of vulgar reproach and insomembers were returned by aristocratic lent contempt. The circumscription of influence, and in which you prayed for the franchise, the division of counties, a redress of this scandalous usurpation and the high monied qualification re→ of the privileges and rights of the peo-quisite in the candidate for parliamentple. Your petition was spurned, your ary honours, still continue to give an remonstrances were despised. Had the aristocratic character and complexion representation of the people then been to the House of Commons, which the purified, the reform of abuses would people cannot but consider dangerous have been a task comparatively easy to their rights, and hostile to their inbut now, when forty years of misrule, terests. In addition to these grounds extravagance, insolence, and false po- of complaint, we have also to lament licy have elapsed, and abuses have ac- that the shield of the ballot has not been quired a magnitude so gigantic, and a thrown over the dependant voter, that ramification so extensive, as to be inter- the sycophancy and the tyranny of the woven with every institution of the canvass have not been abolished, and state, the task of their reform has be- lastly, that the duration of Parliaments come Herculean indeed. Difficult, my has not been shortened. The control Lord, will be the task to separate our of the constituent over the representainstitutions in their purity from the cor- tive body is almost destroyed by the rupt mass which environs them; diffi- present long duration of Parliament; cult will be the task to amputate the and we can regard the Septennial Act in rotten branches, without touching the no other light than an act to release the life of the tree. house from its dependance on, and re3. That reform so long delayed, and sponsibility to, the people, from whom so sternly and steadily refused, has at its members derive their powers, and length been, with reluctance, conceded whose interests they were delegated to to the urgent demands of an oppressed protect and advance. We had hoped and exasperated people; but it has that the spirit of aristocratic and uncon→ come in a form by no means satisfactory stitutional domination, that the overto their wishes, nor commensurate bearing arrogance of wealth, and that to their hopes. In it they cannot but the insolent ambition of rank, so impa behold that instinctive dread of the tient of control, would have been effecpeople, which the aristocracy of this tually curbed by the provisions of the country has so long evinced. We be- bill which the people have been led to regard as the charter of their rights and justice pointed out the necessity of reliberties. ducing the debt from its nominal and 4. Imperfect, however, as the Bill excessive value in depreciated paper to of Reform is, we regard it as the means its true value in standard gold, a parliaof effecting reforms of still greater ment of unprincipled and ignorant legismagnitude and importance, and we now lators, under the auspices of the still proceed to point your Lordship's atten- more ignorant Peel, passed a decree, tion to those results, of which the which has ever since made the country people hail your bill as the harbinger. one scene of bankruptcy and of ruin, Upon those results the expectation of the and inflicted mischief which can never public, roused to a pitch which it would be repaired by the restoration of a mebe dangerous to disappoint, is intently tallic currency, without a previous refixed; and as disappointment of that duction of taxation and an equitable public expectation would be fatal to the adjustment of debts and contracts, both reputation of your Lordship, and what is public and private. That unjust, that of infinitely more importance, fatal to mischievous, that ruinous act of Parlia the tranquillity of the country,-for, my ment, has covered the whole country Lord, it is the anticipation of these bene- with pauperism as with a leprosy. It fits that makes them patient under the has ruined the farmer; it has destroyed endurance of evils which nothing but the manufacturer; it has made our the prospect of speedy relief could ren- merchants bankrupt; and reduced the der endurable, we deem it our solemn free, bold, hardy, and laborious peaand indispensable duty to put your Lord-santry of England, from a state of comship in possession of those great truths, fort and independence, to beggary and which it imports your government to starvation. know, if it be their intention to rule and legislate in harmony with the feelings, the wishes, and the interests of the people. Should your lordship and your Lordship's government neglect thewarning, the error of your policy will be your own, and we, at least, shall be absolved from all share in the tremendous responsibility of the men in whose hands the English constitution, that has withstood the shock of ages, and hitherto bid defiance to popular commotion, shall dissolve. - 6. Seventeen years have elapsed since the termination of the most sanguinary and expensive war recorded in the history of nations; yet in consequence of this misery-creating and misery-dispensing bill of Peel's, the people have not only no mitigation of the rigour of war taxation, but by the operation of that very bill these taxes have actually been augmented. Nominally our annual taxes have been reduced from seventy to fifty-nine millions, but their intrinsic value has been doubled by this act of the collective wisdom of the nation. Hence peace has neither brought plenty nor repose, but in the midst of their burdens the people look back to the period of war as being less oppressive to them than the present disastrous period of peace. 5. The great evil, the grand oppression, is the debt. The crown and the aristocracy have loaded this country for their own benefit, and to the deep and lasting injury of the people, out of whose and whose children's labours it is to be paid, with a debt of 800,000,000l. That debt was contracted in prosecu- 7. But let us turn from the contemtion of a system of scandalous misrule, plation of our domestic misery to the sanctioned by the House of Commons state of our foreign relations So comunder an infamously perverted system of pletely has the debt crippled our reparliamentary representation. That debt, sources, that England, the proud, impewhich was borrowed in paper greatly rious England, the queen of nations and depreciated in value, the people have haughty mistress of the sea, has become been bound by a recent act of Parlia-the humblest, the most suppliant of ment, in defiance of all equity and jus-them all. In the words of a great writer, tice, to pay in standard gold. Though the debt says to the king of England, |